Mining controversy:The latest batch of, well, let us say 'questionable' reporting on the Middle East is the story that Somali fighters were fighting alongside Hizb Allah forces during the Israeli-Hizb Allah mini-war. The story, supposedly contained in a U.N. report leaked to Reuters, was denied by the Israelis, who one assumes would know.

The whole idea is faintly ridiculous. So a bunch of hardline Salafi SICS militants, in the midst of fighting their own civil war, somehow get in touch with Hizb Allah recruiters, drop everything and head north. So what are we supposed to assume, that 700 armed Africans were running around the comparatively small battlefront and nobody, including the IDF, noticed?

This is totally counterintuitive. SICS militiamen are largely untrained irregulars with cast-off Soviet arms and a background in fighting other thugs in low-intensity street fights, with no track record of exporting their own violence abroad. Hizb Allah is an Iranian-trained paraprofessional force with modern American and Iranian weapons, tactical and strategic training, and experience in combined-arms maneuvers against a deadly and disciplined Israeli foe. Taking on a bunch of Somali one-offs would be like the U.S. going to war with the Crips as an auxiliary. Even ignoring Sunni-Shi'a sectarianism, Hizb Allah does not play well with others, and prefers to keep its military activites in-house.

And the supposed quid pro quo is iffy, too. Iran doesn't have a huge amount of uranium, but its ten or so mines are expected to have around 5,000 tons of recoverable reserves. Somalia is estimated to have 6,600 tons of recoverable reserves and has no actual production. The uranium deposits are believed to be primarily in the Galguduud region, where the Islamists maintain a significant presence in the city of Dhusa Mareb, so it's not physically impossible to get to it, but in order to make this happen you'd either have to start up large-scale mining and refining operations in a volatile warzone, or else strip-mine and truck hundreds of thousands of tons of ore to a port city and ship it up the Persian Gulf to Iran for processing.

Doesn't make much sense. I'm sure we'll hear more going forward, but for now this all sounds too bizarre to be believed.

 
Fire, meet gasoline: Things aren't improving in Iraq, as Prime Minister al-Malaki reportedly issues an arrest warrant and requests Interpol help in apprehending Shaikh Harith al-Dhai, leader of the Sunni Association of Muslim Scholars (Hayat al-Ulama' al-Muslimin), in Amman to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Hassan al-Banna, one of the foundational figures of the Muslim Brotherhood (Ikhwan al-Muslimin). Details are sketchy, but the spark appears to have been a purported AMS document calling for the resettlement of Sunni families in the abandoned houses of al-rafida (a pejorative term for Shi'a not previously used by the AMS). If accurate, such a document would be a call by the AMS for ethnic cleansing of Shi'ites.

On the other side, Sunnis are showing a purported SCIRI document warning Shi'ites to prepare for an all-out offensive by Sunnis. Iraqi Accord Front figure Adnan Dulaimi, also in Amman, is calling for Sunni Arabs to come to Iraq to fight the Iranians, who he linked to the Shi'ite Safavid dynasty that ruled Persia for two centuries and forced many Sunni-to-Shi'a conversions.

In Baghdad, the government still maintains that almost all of the Sunnis kidnapped from the Ministry of Higher Education Tuesday have been released, but the Minister of Education claims that at least forty are still hostage and are being tortured. In Ramadi, American troops appear to be leading a determined offensive, but officially deny any serious ongoing military activity despite press reports to the contrary. There is some evidence that a base inside Ramadi, possibly Camp Junction City, where Iraqi police are being trained, may have been dismantled. Junction City has been plagued with security and sanitation issues, so such a move would not be unprecedented.

The worst-case scenario in Iraq is the violence boiling over the borders with regional implications: Sunni and Shi'a fighting over the oil-rich east while radical Sunnis flee into the region's underpopulated center to destabilize Arab states such as Jordan and Saudi Arabia. The end result would be paramilitary violence erupting along ethnoreligious lines while Turkey, Syria and Iran fight for valuable Iraqi lands and against enemies within Iraq. If general confessional civil war breaks out, we're one step closer to that nightmare.

 
Not good news, coming at a time when we need clarity and focus, not more political bushwah.

I have to wonder who the "former senior administration official is," though. Card? McClellan? Rand Beers? Barney? My money's on Armitage, who was described as a "senior former White House official" by the Guardian only a few days ago.

 
Great moments in journamalism, part XIV: Evidently Marcus Mabry took "Burying Your Lede 101" at J-school. Consider the following example from this recent Newsweek story:

Other parts of a potential Democratic agenda receive less support, especially calls to impeach Bush: 47 percent of Democrats say that should be a "top priority," but only 28 percent of all Americans say it should be, 23 percent say it should be a lower priority and nearly half, 44 percent, say it should not be done. (Five percent of Republicans say it should be a top priority and 15 percent of Republicans say it should be a lower priority; 78 percent oppose impeachment.)

Let's rewrite this:

A majority of Americans believe that impeaching President Bush should be a priority of a potential Democratic Congress, with 28% saying it should be a "top priority." 20% of Republicans polled believed that a Democratic Congress should impeach George W. Bush.

The only thing I can think of is that Newsweek lacks confidence in its own poll, believing that the support-for-impeachment numbers are somehow misleading. If so, I'd love for the magazine to explain it, rather than gloss over it with a misleading graf.

 
The tipping point where we can no longer regain control over Iraqi violence is, in part, when Iraqis assign greater legitimacy to the sources of violence than to the pro-American forces trying to quell them.

We're getting close:

Behind the maze of men with guns in Iraq is a very simple truth: their barrels offer protection, something Iraqis say the government has never given them.

Iraq is awash in killings, and many are blamed on the Mahdi Army, the militia commanded by a glowering Shiite cleric, Moktada al-Sadr. The cleric controls a large and crucial bloc of seats in Parliament. At the same time, 92 percent of the mortar and rocket attacks in August and September on the Green Zone — the protected area in Baghdad that houses the American military and the Iraqi government — came from Sadr City.

As the recent fighting in Amara shows, the group and its rogue elements have settled deeply into the crevices of Iraqi society, filling college security offices and student unions, as well as the ranks of the police and the army. It is often at the center of spasms of sectarian killing, like the violence last weekend in Balad, and it frequently battles rival Shiite groups, as in Amara, and earlier this month in another southern city, Diwaniya. ... [I]t is impossible to tell where loyalties to Mr. Sadr end and criminal activity begins. Rogue groups of his former followers now run underground fiefdoms of sectarian killing and kidnapping — and even a special market for victims' cars. One of his senior aides was arrested by the American military earlier this week on suspicion of having directed the killing and torture of Sunnis. The Americans later reluctantly released him at the request of the Iraqi government.

The mechanisms for killing have become more sophisticated. A senior coalition intelligence official at a briefing last month detailed an example of a Mahdi Army death squad. Group leaders are issued instructions on order forms listing a target person and an address, the official said. A group can consist of special forces, intelligence units and punishment committees, complete with clerics who impose sentences. Some of the leaders may be inside the Interior Ministry, the official said. Others may work with their contacts within the ministry to obtain equipment such as cars.

The Mahdi Army's victims are sad, struggling figures, often stuffed into the trunks of cars. This tactic became so widespread that Iraqi soldiers at checkpoints have been known to stop cars that are playing loud, thumping music, mistaking the sound for a person trying to get out.

In the eastern Baghdad neighborhood of Ur, which is connected to Sadr City by a fast and largely empty road, a worker counted 14 victims on a particularly bad day in August, shortly after an attack on a procession of Shiite pilgrims. He said four were shot in front of him on a dirt road near a high school. The bodies of another 10 were dumped there later that day. Police cars, like hearses, later picked them up.

The killing took place openly, often silently, and without fanfare. Gunmen did not bother to hide their faces. One resident sardonically referred to Ur as gbour, which means graves in Arabic.

Iraqis began referring to the victims, often Sunnis, as sheep. Most condemn the killing, which they attribute to the Mahdi militia.

"I know they are killing Sunnis now — none of us likes this," said Firas al-Saeidi, a 29-year-old Shiite resident of Sadr City, who works in the Ministry of Defense. "But it keeps balance in our sensitive areas. We need that."

 
Friday iPod Blogging: To celebrate five years of iPods:

Neko Case, "Fox Confessor Brings the Flood"
Cheb Mami, "Haoulou"
The Smiths, "Girlfriend in a Coma"
Daniel Lanois, "Brother L.A."
Bruce Cockburn, "Someone I Used to Love"
Balanescu Quartet, "Chain"
Gin Blossoms, "Jet Black Sunrise"
Big Twang, "Stealing Away"
Annie Lennox, "Precious"
Mose Allison & Van Morrison, "Tell Me Something"

 
Shorter Donald J. Boudreaux: The health of the average American is better than that of Victorian peasants. Therefore, we should ignore any problems associated with global warming.

Seriously, is this what GMU is up to these days? With "libertarian" screeds like this publicly passing as logic, we could transition to a fossil-fuel-free economy by hooking a dynamo up to Hayek's wildly spinning corpse.

 
Washington Post: Lebanese find humor in war while Hizb Allah begins the cease-fire spin.

 
Washington Post: Quake relief cash funds bomb plot.

If the money was transferred to Jamaat ad-Dawa as the article says, it's not a long leap to al-Qaeda at all. The history of Jamaat ad-Dawa (JD, "Organization of the (Muslim) Call/Teaching") is pretty straightforward.

The grandparent organization is Markaz Ad-Dawat Wal Irshad (MDI, "Center for Teaching and Guidance") originally created in 1987 by bin Laden mentor Abdullah Azzam and two Pakistani professors, Hafiz Saeed and Zafar Iqbal. MDI's more famous paramilitary force, Lashkar-i-Taiba (LiT, "Army of the Pure") was and remains active in Kashmir and even within India proper, operating with more or less a hands-off blessing from the Pakistani government. LiT's main goal is the installation of Muslim rule within Kashmir, Junagarh in Gujarat, and Hyderabad, as well as creating explicitly Muslim rule in Pakistan.

After the 2001 attacks, the U.S. pressured Pakistan to shut down MDI; as a result, the group was technically banned, but really underwent a name change to Jamaat ad-Dawa and, on the surface, changed its mission to charity and relief. (As noted in this WaPo article, it's practically the disaster relief organization of choice in much of Pakistan.) Although Hafiz Saeed supposedly stepped down as organization leader in 2002, he's assumed to still be running the show. Zafar Iqbal subsequently formed his own splinter faction due to personality and tactical disagreements, and now runs Khairun Naas (KN, "People's Welfare"). This originally appeared to be a serious blow to JD and LiT, but now seems to have done little damage to LiT's operational capability, leading some though not a majority of analysts to suspect that the split was encouraged by Pakistan for control purposes.

What is new about this story is that MDI and LiT have always concentrated on Subcontinent targets: if they've moved into enabling attacks against the "far enemy" in Europe and America, then we've moved into an environment where our own security is much more closely tied to the status of Kashmir than previously thought. Pakistan is unlikely to give up its ace card -- terrorists and guerillas -- in the disupted territories without significant incentives, so where do we take the diplomatic heavy lifting from here?

 
News of the World: In Somalia, as fighting rages between the Shar'ia courts' militias and regional warlords, the drug lord and Hawiye clan leader Shaykh Yusuf Muhammad Siad Indha Ade of the Lower Shabelle region has created a splinter paramilitary named al-Shabaab that looks set to cause chaos within the Shar'ia courts' ranks ... In the ongoing hostilities between Ethiopia and Eritrea, an Ethiopian general has defected to the other side: Brigadier General Kemal Gelchu reportedly went over with a few hundred Oromo and Amhara officers, enlisted troops, and materiel. Gelchu was previously a commander for the UNMIL force in Liberia ...

In Ukraine, pro-Russian forces ousted in the "Orange Revolution" have returned to power in a compromise with beleagured President Viktor Yushchenko ... Bernard Lewis seems to think Iran may nuke Israel on August 22, which corresponds this year to 27 Rajab, by tradition Lailat al Miraj, the date of Muhammad's "Night Journey." (Sunni Salafists like al-Qaeda discourage any celebration of Lailat al Miraj, and disavow the tradition that dates the journey.) Now the Weekly World News of Russia, Pravda, agrees ... In Georgia, the government has given the go-ahead for UNOMIG to begin patrols of the Kodori Gorge ...

Does Rummy want out of Iraq? Sherwood Ross of the Middle East Times has some dismal thoughts on the American presence there ... Ha'aretz calls the Israeli incursion into Lebanon a "humiliation" for the IDF but places the blame on the air force while letting Olmert and Livni slide ... Author Jonathan Cook defends the use of anti-personnel rockets by Hizb Allah and claims that the Shi'ite paramilitary is targeting its rockets at IDF military installations, not civilian areas (Hey, I don't endorse 'em, I just report 'em) ...

Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi visited the controversial Yasukuni shrine for Japanese war dead, sparking Chinese protest after reports that South Korea and China would accept one last visit to the shrine ... Another H5N1 victim in China has been reported dead ... The Chinese government's continuing cautious acceptance of homosexuality took another step forward with the opening of a government-approved online gay forum ... A Japanese survivor of World War Two relates his grotesque wartime experiences ... The first intra-Japanese hostile takeover attempt between Oji Paper and Hokuetsu Paper Mills is almost over, with Oji apparently failing yet still ushering in a new era of Western-style business management ...

More violence in Waziristan and Baluchistan ... India is ratcheting up security in advance of tomorrow's Independence Day celebrations ... Finally, airport security in Pakistan is a bit more serious than our own American TSA employees. What are they planning to shoot with that thing?

 
Andy Sullivan, champion of the zeitgeist: Just don't tell him it's not a cultural bellwether, but a viral Smirnoff ad, okay?

 
Update on that strange Allen comment: blogger Jeffrey Feldman digs up evidence that the odd term Allen used ("macaca," or "macaque") is a common ethnic slur in Francophone countries. Of course, as noted, Allen's mother came from a French colonial family (Tunisia), and it's entirely possible that Allen was more than passingly familiar with the word. (h/t Josh)

 
Moving the goalposts: President Bush declares that Hizb Allah "suffered a defeat," says "There's going to be a new power in the south of Lebanon."

In the New Yorker, Hersh provides more information on the Israeli actions. One passage is of particular note:

The surprising strength of Hezbollah's resistance, and its continuing ability to fire rockets into northern Israel in the face of the constant Israeli bombing, the Middle East expert told me, "is a massive setback for those in the White House who want to use force in Iran. And those who argue that the bombing will create internal dissent and revolt in Iran are also set back."

Nonetheless, some officers serving with the Joint Chiefs of Staff remain deeply concerned that the Administration will have a far more positive assessment of the air campaign than they should, the former senior intelligence official said. "There is no way that Rumsfeld and Cheney will draw the right conclusion about this," he said. "When the smoke clears, they'll say it was a success, and they'll draw reinforcement for their plan to attack Iran."

Make no mistake: Hizb Allah has shown itself to be a very capable paranational military force, even though Syria cut off its supply routes relatively early in the war. Israel's strategy, on the other hand, was monumentally unsuccessful, showing the relative inutility of large-scale air assaults in 4GW. Only a repeat of the 1982 invasion could have successfully routed Hizb Allah, and Israel was unwilling to repeat its eighteen-year-long experience in occupation.

The cease-fire, while certainly welcome for civilians on both sides of the border, will almost certainly not lead to an excision of Hizb Allah's paramility capability; Nasr Allah's prestige has expanded exponentially in not only Lebanon (which was tired of him and his thugs before the Israeli attacks) but in the wider Arab world; and Iran had an opportunity to see some of its weapons and 4GW tactics tested against a modern conventional military force, to satisfying effect.

In the long run, Hizb Allah will be back, especially since Israel's attacks significantly damaged the already fragile stability of Lebanon's government and the incursion created new moral flashpoints for the Arab "street." (The extent of damage in Qana II is debatable; its long-term effect on Arab minds is not.) Nothing has been done to cut Hizb Allah from Iran, and thus Syria will remain (largely unwillingly) in the Iranian orbit. Hence, the strategic situation has deteriorated from a month ago: there remains the probability of the creation of a geopolitical continuum of interest stretching from Tehran through Baghdad and Damascus to Israel's front door, and Israel has lost some of its hard-won military prestige, shown in Arab governments' quick turnaround from their initial condemnation of Hizb Allah.

But, hell, let's declare victory and get out. More background on the Israeli incursion at Global Guerillas.

 
I have to agree with TNR (no permalinks; their site appears to have problems): George Allen just can't seem to get past a genuinely "creepy" public attitude towards race. In this case, it was calling a 20-year-old Indian-American a nonsense name, "Macaca," and patronizingly telling him, "Welcome to America."

TNR has done a solid job of tracking down Allen's strange racial actions and attitudes: growing up as a half-French child of football royalty, Allen reinvented himself as a Copenhagen-spitting, boots-wearing, Confederate battle flag-waving would-be redneck -- in other words, a stereotype he would have gathered from shows like 'Hee-Haw' (according to Ryan Lizza, Allen's favorite show) and 'Dukes of Hazzard.' Beyond that, his sister has charged that Allen was a sadistic sibling who, amongst other things, once dangled her by her feet over Niagra Falls.

Not exactly Presidential material, as these things go: it's one thing to have a black-sheep background, but another to have it documented on paper. Allen is tipped to beat former Secretary of the Navy James Webb in the upcoming election, but his Presidential hopes surely have ended by now.

 
Marine hypoxia: know it.

The basic theory of hypoxic events goes as follows: when deep marine waters upwell to the surface, they bring a large number of nutrients with them, which then stimulate algal blooms. When the algae and bacteria die, they sink to the bottom and are consumed by aerobic bacteria, which flourish and deplete the water's oxygen content. The hypoxic or even anoxic water creates a dead zone -- an underwater desert in which life is literally choked to death.

Natural hypoxic cycles have been documented worldwide, but we're starting to see new areas forming and existing ones being exacerbated. Although previously-developed marine models do predict the creation and expansion of hypoxic zones as a side-effect of global warming (for example, from changes in nutrient-rich riverine ruoff, or through changes in the amount and circulation of arctic water), no one can say for sure if what we're seeing is a genuinely anthropogenic event. Furthermore, although the affected areas are almost entirely cleared of fauna, hypoxic zones serve as buffers between species and can prevent predators from crossing over into prey habitats. Like most aspects of climate change, we are not well-equipped to predict the effects of what we're seeing.

 
Deplaned, boss, deplaned! Even though the Bojinka redux -- multiple international airliners brought down by a coordinated explosive strike -- was foiled today, the economic impacts continue. The total shutdown of Heathrow has thrown air schedules into disarray, with the result that travellers are stranded across the United States. In my case, I've spent eight hours at LaGuardia dealing with AirTran, whose service reps have a distressing tendency to hide or, when that fails, to simply lie about flight status. Worst. Airline. Ever.

I'm sure that the economic damages due to a publicized but failed terror strike will be of great analysts, but for now I'm just looking for a way out.

 
The recent dustup between The New Republic (or, as they apparently prefer to be called, THE NEW REPUBLIC) and DailyKos is interesting primarily as an example of the sort of blue-on-blue fratricide that liberal bloggers and liberal magazines profess to disdain.

Basically, to catch those up who probably don't otherwise care, former Virginia governor turned '08 hopeful Mark Warner hired Kos' friend and co-author Jerome Armstrong of myDD.com. Shortly thereafter, Warner showed up at the Vegas-hosted YearlyKos convention as a favored guest, much to the consternation of a number of Kos stalwarts (see here, here, and again here). This appears to have dovetailed with a previous incident in which Kos abruptly chose, last October, to endorse Sherrod Brown over blogosphere favorite Paul Hackett for the upcoming Ohio Senate race. At the time, Brown had hired Armstrong as a political consultant.

Now, this is something that ain't all nothin', as we folksily say down here in the South. There's certainly contextual evidence that Kos and Armstrong -- both of whom have never been terribly reticent in showing themselves to be ambitious in getting a foothold in Democratic party internal politics -- are using their blogophones to present themselves as online kingmakers to equally-ambitious Dem pols. Insofar as people expect bloggers, or at least these two bloggers, to be above the party fray (and who expects that?), this may be disappointing, but as far as political consultancy goes it's pretty small potatoes; Lieberman consultant Carter Eskew, for example, has spent years shilling for clients like Big Tobacco (when they were still insisting on the health-neutral effects of their products), Big Pharma (to protect its profits in Medicare Part D), and Big Broadcasting (to get spectrum without having to purchase it from the government) while also representing Democratic clients. Indeed, many of Eskew's commercials for his corporate clients soft-sell the Democratic party as well.

So far, the storyline is simple: Kos and Armstrong are using their online credibility to mobilize support for conservative (Warner) and conventional (Brown) Democratic candidates. (Warner, it should be noted, is even the beneficiary of Left Blogostan's nemesis, consultant Mudcat Saunders.) For those who pay attention to the tight complete graph of the DailyKos/myDD orbit, this is fairly interesting inside baseball. But then The New York Times and THE NEW REPUBLIC start to get involved. Chris Sullentrop, who has previously criticized Kos for his political work coexisting with his blogging, linked Kos' and Armstrong's political consulting to Armstrong's apparent past touting inflated Internet stocks. (Also see here.)

From there, TNR and Slate's Mickey Kaus were off to the races. TNR's Zengerle found a private e-mail from Kos asking liberal bloggers to "ignore this [story] for now" in order to "starve it of oxygen." He then followed it up with the (let's be honest, potentially libelous) allegation that Kos is threatening noncompliant blogs with financial ruin. "[A] lot of these blogs' financial health hinges upon staying in Kos's good graces. Is it any wonder they're so obedient?"

Now, Doxagora has never accepted advertising (and with the frequency of posts over the last year or so, few would offer). But had I known that I was missing out on a veritable cornucopia of cash, I would have joined Pajamas Media or Advertising Liberally long ago. Hell, I would have just posted kitten pictures all day had I known I was just burning money.

To be fair, TNR has been a money pit for, well, its entire existence (as are pretty much all political and policy magazines), but even so it should be obvious that bloggers aren't in it for the money: we do it because we're generally opinionated bastards with something (or just as often nothing) to say. Certainly some bloggers have tried to leverage their work into advertising networks or book contracts or, yes, political consultancies (and so the founder of RedState ended up in my latest copy of Campaigns and Elections giving blogcentric advice to campaign managers): but except for AmericaBlog's endless fundraising drives, Josh Marshall's burgeoning TPM empire, and a few journalists who use their blogs to actually finance real reportage, bloggers lose money on what they do, even with the $4.85 per month that something like Advertising Liberally brings in.

So.

Zengerle followed up his allegation with three e-mails allegedly lifted from the aforementioned mailing list. One, from Mike Stark of CallingAllWingnuts, expresses reservations about the situation and says that "I guess we can leave it to them to formulate a response. But they need to have one ready." The second, from lawyer and author Glen Greenwald, warns that "Terse denials and politician-like refusals to talk about it will, it seems clear to me, only inflame things further." But the third e-mail, from Steve Gilliard, seems to most strongly support Zengerle's thesis in that it calls for an active discussion of the issue: "I dont see how this can be ignored. We should all write in defense of this once we know the facts. Jerome?"

One problem: the Gilliard e-mail was a fake. Zengerle admitted that he was burned by the source, but refused to back down, citing "Armstrong's troubles with the SEC; Armstrong's relationship with Moulitsas and Moulitsas's pattern of supporting politicians who hire Armstrong as a consultant; Moulitsas's attempts to silence liberal bloggers from commenting on these matters; the seeming acquiescence of so many of these liberal bloggers (including Greenwald) to Moulitsas's demands" and, in a bizarre attempt to throw as much chaff as possible in the air, Armstrong's evident belief in astrology.

Then things got really fun.

First, Kos responded, calling TNR "just another cog of the Vast RIGHT Wing Conspiracy ... mortally wounded and cornered, desperate for relevance." TNR owner Marty Peretz (who I have previously accused of incoherent ranting as editorial policy) sallied forth despite finding it "a bit demeaning to defend oneself against Kos." Kos is "illiterate ... just plain illiterate," writing "rant[s]" that "border[] on a nut case's." But this was a gentlemen's spat, complete with waving gloves, compared to the vitriol to come. Lee Siegel, the senior editor (how many senior editors does this magazine have?) who handles movie and television reviews, weighed in, not once but twice, in a remarkable effort to prove that Kos is not only rhetorically a fascist, but a literal fascist, the heir of El Mozote and the killers of Oscar Romero (evidently, when Siegel talks about the "fascistic forces ranged against Lieberman," he is saying that the Senator is in danger of being the victim of a new Shoah, or at least a Russian-style pogrom). He bases this on the fact that ... well, the fact that Kos lived in El Salvador when he was very young and evidently had no position on the Salvadoran civil violence at the time:

It's a bizarre phenomenon, the blogosphere. It radiates democracy's dream of full participation but practices democracy's nightmare of populist crudity, character-assassination, and emotional stupefaction. It's hard fascism with a Microsoft face. ... Even beyond the thuggishness, what I despise about so many blogurus, is the frivolity of their "readers." ... The blogosphere's fanaticism is, in many ways, the triumph of a lack of focus. ...

[F]anaticism ruled in the responses to what I wrote yesterday. ... [T]hese abusive attempts to autocratically or dictatorially control criticism came about because I said that the blogosphere had the quality of fascism, which my dictionary defines as "any tendency toward or actual exercise of severe autocratic or dictatorial control." The proof, you might say, is in the puddingheads. I am overwhelmed by the intolerance and rage in the blogosphere. ... [I]nsults, personal attacks, and even threats ... truly [are] the stuff of thuggery and fascism.

Two other traits of fascism are its hatred of the processes of politics, and the knockabout origins of its adherents. Communism was hatched by elites. Fascism was born along the drifting paths of rootless men, often ex-soldiers who had fought in the First World War and been demobilized. [N.B.: Kos is a military vet. -tWB] They turned European politics into a madhouse of deracinated ambition.

Folks, take notes: that's how you do maddened invective! For someone who seems to give moral equivalence to bad names and Kristallnacht, Siegel is remarkably adept at the thuggery and fascism himself. (Though I would recommend that those still supporting Kos recognize, as Digby has, that they are following a veritable online Adolf, "a rootless former soldier looking for meaning in a stark post-modern landscape of internet cafes and shiny espresso carts." Beware!)

So, what's the upshot of this? First, TNR is engaging, consciously or not, in a bit of political triangulation: the war that it (and I) supported has dissolved into an ungovernable mess, bearing out the predictions of some of its opponents. Lieberman has, from a political perspective, become a burden to his own party, something that is evident even to the magazine that endorsed him for the 2004 Dem primary. Now Kos is touting conservative Warner and Peretz is (as he always has) championing Al Gore. Obviously, for TNR to arrive at an anti-Iraq War, anti-Lieberman, pro-Gore stance, it must show that it is still distanced from the, er, "madhouse of deracinated ambition" of the blogosphere. So political attacks are the order of the day. (Parenthetically, is Siegel supporting "politics without government?" Because that way lies Carl Schmitt, and just beyond that ... well, let's just leave that where it lies. I prefer not to charge others with fascist sympathies without direct evidence.)

I don't have any real political sympathies for Kos; in fact, my beliefs are often fairly closely aligned to those of TNR itself. But this whole imbroglio manages to place both sides in a dismal light, and suggests that TNR may have finally reached the point where it's simply direct competition for sites like DailyKos (something that the Washington Monthly, despite or perhaps because of its taking on Kevin Drum as blog-editor, has avoided). If so, it's as much dead meat as dead trees.

 
The fact that HUD Secretary Alphonso Jackson shut down a contract bidder based on the bidder's stated dislike of the President is surprising. The fact that he'd be so stupid as to brag about it is amazing.

After discussing the huge strides the agency has made in doing business with minority-owned companies, Jackson closed with a cautionary tale, relaying a conversation he had with a prospective advertising contractor.

"He had made every effort to get a contract with HUD for 10 years," Jackson said of the prospective contractor. "He made a heck of a proposal and was on the (General Services Administration) list, so we selected him. He came to see me and thank me for selecting him. Then he said something ... he said, 'I have a problem with your president.'

"I said, 'What do you mean?' He said, 'I don't like President Bush.' I thought to myself, 'Brother, you have a disconnect -- the president is elected, I was selected. You wouldn't be getting the contract unless I was sitting here. If you have a problem with the president, don't tell the secretary.'

"He didn't get the contract," Jackson continued. "Why should I reward someone who doesn't like the president, so they can use funds to try to campaign against the president? Logic says they don't get the contract. That's the way I believe."

Let me just quote in (large) part from a comment I made at Brad DeLong's place:

From the remarks, it sounds like this was an FSS contract on GSA schedule 541, conducted under FAR part 8.4. FSS contracts avoid the normal bid requirements of FAR Part 15, but they are competitive bids, not exempted from judicial review under 7 USC § 702 or administrative review by GAO under 4 CFR § 21 (see also FAR 33), and decisions cannot be "arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, or otherwise not in accordance with law." (7 USC § 706(2)(A)) (Successful challenges have been mounted against FSS awards, but they're rare.)

Federal contracting isn't my world, but Jackson's acts certainly appear to be a breach of the government's implied duty to consider bona fide offers fully and fairly, his decision being "arbitrary and capricious toward the bidder-claimant." (Keco Ind. v. U.S., 492 F.2nd 1200, 1203 (Ct. Cl. 1974)) From a quick review of the relevant statutes, regulations, and cases, I'd argue that there's very likely a civil breach of duty here, but as I've said, this isn't my world -- federal contracting is extremely byzantine. ...

Internally, I think these sorts of things fall under the GSA OIG's Office of Investigations, and it would be interesting to hear what their take would be. Not that GSA is exempt from partisan hackery -- just remember the recent case of David Safavian at OMB OFPP for his acts at GSA.

As for individual penalties, we're talking 5 USC § 7323(a)(4)(a): "an employee may not ... knowingly solicit or discourage the participation in any political activity of any person who has an application for any compensation, grant, [or] contract ... pending before the employing office of such employee." The penalty is removal from office under 5 USC § 7326. Seems like it might apply ....

This issue is going to blow up very soon for Mr. Jackson.

Update: That didn't take long. Now that calls are being raised by Congresspersons for Jackson's resignation or removal, he's denying the story ever took place:

Dustee Tucker, a spokeswoman for Jackson, told the Dallas Business Journal Tuesday that Jackson's comments at his April 28 speech were purely "anecdotal."

"He was merely trying to explain to the audience how people in D.C., will say critical things about the secretary, will unfairly characterize the president and then turn around and ask you for money," Tucker said. "He did not actually meet with someone and turn down a contract. He's not part of the contracting process."

(On May 3, Tucker told the Business Journal that the contract Jackson was referring to in Dallas was "an advertising contract with a minority publication," though she could not provide the contract's value.)

Tucker added Tuesday that Jackson is not part of the contract award process and that HUD has a senior procurement officer that oversees the process. "Politics does not play a part in who we advertise with or who we award contracts to," she said.

As the story notes, on May 3rd HUD could cite the contract in question; today, they're denying it ever existed. But even that may not be a defense -- indeed, even the act of telling the story before an audience of HUD contractors could be construed as a Hatch Act violation. (Hatch Act violations are an OSC matter.)

Update 2: The original story says:

Dustee Tucker, a spokeswoman for Jackson's office, said the value of the advertising contract, which was to be placed with a minority publication, could not be provided.

"Because it was not awarded per what the Secretary said, we don't have any record of it," she said. "It was probably all verbal at that point."

So, was this a bid contract or a response to an RFP? Hard to say. If it wasn't an actual bid proposal, then it may not show up in FPDS.

 
"Yes, they chose unwisely." Instapundit appears to celebrate chaos in Iraq.

 
We can't say we weren't warned: From a 2004 letter ostensibly from Abu Musab al-Zarqawi to the al-Qaeda senior cadre:

[The Shi`a] in our opinion are the key to change. I mean that targeting and hitting them in [their] religious, political, and military depth will provoke them to show the Sunnis their rabies … and bare the teeth of the hidden rancor working in their breasts. If we succeed in dragging them into the arena of sectarian war, it will become possible to awaken the inattentive Sunnis as they feel imminent danger and annihilating death at the hands of these Sabeans. ...

I come back and again say that the only solution is for us to strike the religious, military, and other cadres among the Shi`a with blow after blow until they bend to the Sunnis. Someone may say that, in this matter, we are being hasty and rash and leading the [Islamic] nation into a battle for which it is not ready, [a battle] that will be revolting and in which blood will be spilled. This is exactly what we want, since right and wrong no longer have any place in our current situation. The Shi`a have destroyed all those balances. ...

If we are able to strike them with one painful blow after another until they enter the battle, we will be able to [re]shuffle the cards. Then, no value or influence will remain to the Governing Council or even to the Americans, who will enter a second battle with the Shi`a. This is what we want, and, whether they like it or not, many Sunni areas will stand with the mujahidin. Then, the mujahidin will have assured themselves land from which to set forth in striking the Shi`a in their heartland, along with a clear media orientation and the creation of strategic depth and reach among the brothers outside [Iraq] and the mujahidin within.

Dan Murphy at CSM reports on what could finally trigger a sectarian war. NBC's Iraq bureau warns that if the Shiites don't forebear (and they haven't so far), Iraq is "almost certainly headed towards civil war." Riverbend is worried. Iraq the Model is not sanguine. Healing Iraq says the situation is "Bad, bad, bad."

The Mahdi Army has reportedly taken to the streets in Sadr City, greater Baghdad, and Basra. Al-Sadr has cut short his Lebanon trip and is returning to Iraq. Juan Cole suggests that Sistani's call for "peaceful" demonstrations is disingenuous (check HI for a picture of what is evidently de rigueur for peaceful demonstrations this year, as well as maps of currently-known violent attacks). If Sistani is effectively calling for violence, then things may really be spiraling out of control this time.

Hang on tight.

 
I have to confess that I'm having a great deal of trouble understanding the sturm und drang over DP World taking over subsidiary P&O's contracts to run six major American ports, despite the fact that it seems set to cause the Administration a massive headache.

A little background: DP World is the result of a series of mergers and purchases that included Dubai Ports International, Dubai Ports Authority, British firm P&O and American CSX World Terminals. As a result, DPW has contracts on virtually every continent to run ports, including in such sensitive areas as South Korea.

DPW is primarily owned, via Dubai Holding, by the powerful al-Maktoum family; P&O's other suitor was the Singapore-owned Temasek Holdings. Flush with record petroleum profits and with the UAE standing at the epicenter of the regional economy, DH has aggressively moved to take large stakeholds in companies like Daimler-Chrysler and invest in massive infrastructure upgrades.

The UAE is a conglomerate of several "statelets," of which the Emirate of Dubai is one of the most powerful, and certainly the most cosmopolitan. Dubai's ruler, Shaykh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, is the vice-president of the UAE and a strong force for modernization in the area. In contrast to its neighbors, the UAE in general, and Dubai in particular, practices tolerance as official and semi-official policy and has made economic and social openness a major project. In a sense, the UAE is the mirror image of the Shah of Iran's "White Revolution" -- it successfully invested its petroleum wealth and diversified beyond its borders, but without crushing local civil rights and without fomenting an Islamist opposition.

Of course, from our Western perspective the UAE is far from perfect: it is nondemocratic (though that certainly contributes to its political stability); outside of the emirates of Dubai and Ras Al-Khaimah Shari'a courts have authority to try criminal cases and can impose unconscionable punishments (though they are frequently communted by the government when imposed on non-Muslims); and freedom of speech is basically nonexistent (including Internet proxies that block pornographic and radical Islamist content). However, it can't be denied that the UAE is considerably better than its Gulf neighbors (with the possible exception of Qatar) and Dubai in particular serves as something like the Singapore of the Gulf.

As the financial center of the Middle East and as one of the largest and most open gold markets, Dubai has served as a repository for the funds of many Islamist groups, much as Switzerland served as the bankers for international crime syndicates. But the UAE is no friend to radical Islamists, and has been working to tighten up its financial reporting requirements. Furthermore, Islamists took aim at the UAE after a 2005 offer from Dubai-based EMAAR Properties was floated to purchase the homes of Israeli settlers after the government-mandated pullout. (The EMAAR bid was also attacked by other power centers within the UAE, and appears to reflect a schism between forward-leaning Dubai and more conservative, anti-Israeli emirates.)

So why are Democrats and Republicans attacking Dubai? Political opportunism, to be sure, and a measure of anti-Arab xenophobia as well. Democrats -- even the much-maligned "Kossacks" -- are always seeking to get on the hawkish side of Bush. When this means improving equipment for soldiers and Marines and more realistic strategies for our occupation of Iraq, so much the better. But this is a serious foreign policy blunder. When Rep. Peter King calls the UAE "the heartland of al-Qaida" and the Washington Times says the UAE's government (such as it is) is "favored by al Qaeda," they display a willful and dangerous ignorance that could detrimentally impact our attempts to win hearts and minds across the Muslim world.

 
Restatement of facts: "Maher Arar ... is a 33-year-old native of Syria who immigrated to Canada with his family when he was a teenager. He is a dual citizen of Syria and Canada and presently resides in Ottawa. In September 2002, while vacationing with his family in Tunisia, he was called back to work by his employer to consult with a prospective client. He purchased a return ticket to Montreal with stops in Zurich and New York and left Tunisia on September 25, 2002.

"On September 26, 2002, Arar arrived from Switzerland at [JFK] in New York to catch a connecting flight to Montreal. Upon presenting his passport to an immigration inspector, he was indentified as 'the subject of a ... lookout as being the member of a known terrorist organization." ... He was interrogated for ... approximately eight hours ... placed in solitary confinement ... transported in chains and shackles and was left in a room with no bed and no lights on throughout the night. ... [T]wo FBI agents interrogated Arar for about five hours, asking him questions about Osama bin Laden, Iraq and Palestine. Arar alleges that the agents yelled and swore at him throughout the interrogation. They ignored his repeated requests to make a telephone call and see a lawyer. ... Arar was taken back to his cell, chained and shackled and provided a cold McDonald's meal -- his first food in nearly two days. ...

"Arar was given an opportunity to voluntarily return to Syria, but refused, citing a fear of being tortured if returned there ... An immigration officer told Arar that the United States had a 'special interest' in his case and then asked him to sign a form, the contents of which he was not allowed to read. ... Arar was transferred, in chains and shackles, to the Metropolitan Detention Center ("MDC") in Brooklyn, New York, where he was strip-searched and placed in solitary confinement. ... Arar's continued requests to meet with a laywer and make telephone calls were refused.

"On October 1, 2002, the [INS] initiated removal proceedings against Arar, who was charged with being temporarily inadmissible because of his membership in al Qaeda ... Upon being given permission to make one telephone call, Arar called his mother-in-law in Ottawa, Canada. ... [H]is family contacted the [Canadian Consulate] ... The Canadian Consulate had not been notified of Arar's detention. ...

"On October 5, 2002, Arar had his only meeting with counsel. The following day, he was taken in chains and shackles to a room where approximately seven INS officials questioned him about his reasons for opposing removal to Syria. His attorney was not provided advance notice of the interrogation ... Arar further alleges that U.S. officials misled him into thinking his attorney had chosen not to attend."

On October 7, Arar's attorney was informed that Arar had been removed to an INS office for further processing; Arar alleges he never left the MDC and that the government made false and misleading communications to his attorney.

"That same day ... the INS Regional Director, J. Scott Blackman, determined ... that Arar is 'clearly and unequivocally' a member of al Qaeda ... [and] concluded 'that there are reasonable grounds to believe that [Arar] is a danger to the security of the United States.' ...

"[On October 8, 2002], Arar was taken in chains and shackles to a New Jersey airfield, where he boarded a small jet for Washington, D.C. From there, he was flown to Amman, Jordan ... [and] then handed over to Jordanian authorities, who delivered him to the Syrians later that day. ... U.S. officials had not informed either [the] Canadian Consulate ... or [Arar's] attorney that Arar had been removed to Syria.

"During his ten-month period of dentention in Syria, Arar alleges that he was placed in a 'grave' cell measuring six feet long, seven feet high, and three feet wide. The cell was located within the Palestine Branch of the Syrian Military Intelligence. The cell was damp and cold, contained very little light and was infested with rats, which would enter the cell through a small aperture in the ceiling. Cats would urinate on Arar through the aperture, and sanitary facilities were nonexistent. Arar was allowed to bathe himself in cold water once per week. He was prohibited from exercising and was provided barely edible food. Arar lost forty pounds during his ten-month period of detention in Syria. ...

"Arar was interrogated for eighteen hours per day and was physically and psychologically tortured. He was beaten on the palms, hips and lower back with a two-inch-thick electric cable. His captors also used their fists to beat him on his stomach, face and back of his neck. He was subjected to excruciating pain and pleaded with his captors to stop, but they would not. He was placed in a room where he could hear the screams of other detainees being tortured and was told that he, too, would be placed in a spine-breaking "chair," hung upside down in a "tire" for beatings and subjected to electric shocks. To lessen his exposure to the torture, Arar falsely confessed, among other things, to having trained with terrorists in Afghanistan, even though he had never been to Afghanistan and had never been involved in terrorist activity. ...

"Arar notes that the interrogations in the U.S. and Syria contained indentical questions, including a specific question about his relationship with a particular individual wanted for terrorism. ...

"On October 5, 2003, Syria, without filing any charges against Arar, released him into the custody of Canadian Embassy officials in Damascus."

- Arar v. Ashcroft

 
"If someone wants to criticize us for being too careful, I accept that criticism willingly, because we were doing what we could to limit the focus of that report ... to Guantánamo."

To understand the sheer, bald-faced mendacity of this statement, the utter contempt it shows for all fundamental human decency, it has to be read in context. In full context. Go read.

 
Jane Smiley at HuffPo asks the following question in regards to anti-abortion crusaders:

Let's propose a hypothetical; there is a woman in Missouri ... [who] decides to have an abortion. ... Now, at the same time, there's a man in South Carolina who is a deeply religious anti-abortion activist. ...

The question that seems obvious to me is, why would he care about whether a woman he does not know has an abortion or not? He doesn't know her embryo either. So he has no personal relationship with the situation. But he still wants to dictate the terms of the outcome because of his beliefs. It would, possibly, be one thing if he knew the woman or was related to the fetus, but he isn't. He has no investment in the situation except abstractly and emotionally. So why does he care?

There are many good arguments on the pro-choice side of the debate, but this is arrant stupidity. (Her second example, based on gay marriage, is more on the mark.) Most people who are against abortion are against it because they see it as -- not "equivalent to," not "morally the same as" -- murder. To ask why a person would be against the murder of someone they don't know is to sanction just about every bad act under the sun, so long as it happens to someone else.

It's absurd to suggest that Smiley would, say, support the Holocaust because she doesn't personally know any German Jews but her argument, as InstaPundit is fond of saying, is "objectively pro-Holocaust." So if the logical result of a position is opposed to the beliefs of the person positing it, there's obviously a short circuit somewhere. In this case, it's Smiley's lack of argumentative empathy -- she can accept that someone else "believes strongly that abortion is wrong" but can't understand that he actually believes abortion is the greatest wrong.

It's almost a truism to say that the abortion debate is mired between two absolutist sides -- one which can't see abortion as anything short of a holocaust (which they insist is worse than the Shoah itself), and the other which can't understand why anyone would object to another person having an abortion at all.

The vast middle ground remains best captured by Clinton's formulation of abortion policy as "safe, legal and rare" (his wife's characteristically tone-deaf reformulation goes too far; I'd prefer "safe, legal, and unnecessary"). But absolutists prefer the illusion of depth that comes from rhetorical chiaroscuro than the genuine depth of tonal greys.